A Big List of Persuasion Techniques for Marketing — Part 6

I will be reviewing the CXL mini degree of Conversion rate optimisation. Today we will be covering the course of People & Psychology. In this course, we learn about how people are affected and influenced while they are making a decision. We will be continuing our previous lessons on persuasion techniques.

Let’s move to the next persuasion technique and how to implement them online.

Hyperbolic Discounting

When we consider a choice between two rewards, we tend to prefer the readily available one. We have a stronger preference for more immediate payoffs relative to later payoffs. In other words, the present is incredibly more powerful than the future. Imagine we can choose between one candy bar right now, or two in a month’s time. We might prefer the readily available candy bar (instead of waiting a month for an extra bar). However, if we have to wait 12 months to get one candy bar, and 13 months to get two bars, we switch our preference and tend to prefer waiting the extra month.

This effect is explained by hyperbolic discounting models: The longer we have to wait, the more we discount the value of rewards. This discounting is initially strong but then levels off as the wait becomes longer.

Because of this hyperbolic discounting effect, we can switch our preference for ‘waiting for an extra reward’, depending on how far into the future the waiting starts. The further in the future, the more equal the ‘discount factor’ will be (for the perceived costs of waiting).

There are two types of hyperbolic discounting models: ‘sophisticated’ and ‘naive’. When we’re ‘sophisticated’, we realize that we have hyperbolic preferences and will probably take steps to deal with them. However, when we’re ‘naive’, we will not try to counteract the hyperbolic discounting effect.

Scientific research example:

Behavioural scientists have proven that our preferences depend on when we get our reward. More recently, neuroscientists studied this bias in order to find out whether different parts of our brain are involved in immediate and delayed reward decisions. And that is exactly what they found.

McClure et. al (2004) found that decisions involving immediately available rewards activate parts of the limbic system associated with the midbrain dopamine system, including the paralimbic cortex. These brain parts are typically involved in “system 1 processes”: automatic, instinctive, old evolutionary adaptations to our environment.

Intertemporal choices, however, uniformly engage regions of the lateral prefrontal cortex and posterior parietal cortex. These parts of our brain are responsible for so-called “system 2 processes”: the uniquely human capacity for abstract, logical, domain-general reasoning and future planning.

Online persuasion tips:

• Make your solutions directly available (or at least as quickly as possible).
• Push products you prefer to sell by making them more quickly available.
• Experiment with upselling by making the cheaper alternative less readily available (extend the delivery time of the down-sell item).

Equivalence Framing

“Equivalence framing” is the purposeful statement or portrayal of logically equivalent information in such a way that it encourages certain interpretations of the meaningful context, and discourages certain others. These “different, but logically equivalent frames” cause us to alter our preferences. Equivalency frames are often worded in opposite terms. Like “gains” versus “losses”, “full” versus “empty”, “fat” versus “fat-free”, etc.

Unlike emphasis framing (which focuses on different information), equivalence framing focuses on the same information and tries to phrase that information in the most persuasive way.

Online persuasion tips:

• List all your product features and branding aspects (or at least the most important ones). For each feature/attribute, think about how you can word it in opposite terms (e.g. “35% fat” versus 65% fat-free”).
• Now, choose the phrasing that is generally the most persuasive.
• Finally, try to find out the needs for each specific customer (e.g. find out whether he is aiming to lose weight, or craving a greasy burger, by using his Google searches, scraping his social updates, checking the subjects he read, etc.) and start targeting with opposite equivalent frames.

Frontloading

Front-loading content means that you first give away the conclusion. Occasionally it can help to arouse one’s curiosity by not revealing the conclusion at first, but most of the time it works better if you start with the clue. So don’t spend time ‘leading up to your point’.

Our brain is processing huge amounts of information every second (what’s more, reading online takes 20% more time than reading from paper). Therefore, our brain prefers to process as little information as possible. Because users generally assess app, social, web, and mobile pages at a glance, you only have a few precious seconds to encourage people to read more, to take action, or to navigate to another one of your pages.

Providing information in such a way that it costs the least cognitive effort is therefore often the most persuasive tactic (like Steve Krug says: ‘Don’t Make me Think’ ). By providing the most important information first, your prospect can quickly scan whether you offer something interesting and decide to invest more cognitive effort into judging your offer.

W3C example:

The World Wide Web Consortium (W3C: an international community that develops open standards to ensure the long-term growth of the Web), acknowledges the importance of front-loading. As they state, “To decrease the amount of sifting readers perform to find important information, place distinguishing information at the beginning of headings, paragraphs, lists, etc.”.

Online persuasion tips:

Apply this to:

• Page title-level (web/mobile) and subject line-level (e-mail).
• Introduction-level: put your most important content in the upper left corner of your ‘entry page or e-mail.
• Page-level: in your title and introductory paragraph.
• Paragraph-level: in the first sentence.
• Sentence level: in the first words of the sentence.

Present Focus Bias (or Immediacy Effect)

When choosing between two options or rewards, we tend to prefer the most readily available option. In other words, the present and near-future are incredibly powerful. Dan Ariely explains the present focus bias as the ‘Adam and Eve problem’: “You can ask yourself how many of us would sacrifice eternity in the Garden of Eden, for an apple? Well it turns out we do it, and we do it all the time”.

So if we have to choose between an option right now, and a better option in the future, we tend to value the readily available option higher and undermine the long term. The sooner we can get an option, the higher we value it, and the more likely we’ll buy it.

Online persuasion tips:

• Make your solutions directly available (or at least as quickly as possible)
• Promote the availability of your offer (only when it is indeed readily available)
• Push products you prefer to sell by making them more quickly available, or promoting their direct availability relatively more
• Experiment with ‘future discounts (promote a discounted price, which is only available when your customer is willing to wait)

Emphasis Framing

In order to understand and make sense of the world around us, we constantly interpret the meaning of the things and events that we notice. We call this ‘framing’. For example, if you evaluate plans to encourage electrically powered bikes, you might interpret it as environmentally friendly when framed as a moped, but friendly when framed as a bike, and your response will be very different.

Emphasis framing is a persuasion technique where the focus is placed on those specific aspects of a solution that encourage certain interpretations of the meaningful context and discourage certain others. This way the meaningful context in which the choice at hand will be evaluated is influenced. For example, the same car can be presented as ‘low costs’ (monetary frame) as well as ‘fast and powerful’ (social frame). Which frame will be the most persuasive (and which one counter-effective), depends on the frames and meanings used by your customer…

Online persuasion tips:

• What can you find out about the meaningful frames that your customer uses in your type of business and the values associated with them (i.e. Google searches, subjects read, poll answers)?
• Are his frames to your advantage (or don’t you know his frames)? Then emphasize the frame consistent aspects of your solution (i.e. in the name of your product/solution, description, comparison, images and colours used)
• Are they disadvantageous? Then try your customer to shift his frame by first emphasizing information that doesn’t fit the frame your customer uses, trying him to switch to a better frame.